As a leader, how do you create a culture of equality and inclusivity in your organization?
I’ve been writing about this in recent posts. In my years as a business coach, I’ve found that the most effective approach engages all stakeholders: your executives, managers, employees, and clients. Awareness, education, and understanding are critical. This takes intention, commitment, and time.
Leaders often face pressure from clients and other stakeholders for swift change and immediate impact. When they approach change methodically, ensuring a strong foundation is in place, they may be criticized for their slow progress and perceived lack of effort. If they move too swiftly or broadly—without a full understanding of where and how their culture needs to change—their efforts may fail.
Instead, leaders can create a culture of equality and inclusivity with best practices and proven methods that can be quickly and successfully implemented with little or no customization and at low cost.
4 Strategies for Equality and Inclusivity
The most successful companies I have worked with do this with four key strategies:
- Diagnostics: Assess the local context. Your diagnostics should include research on your own business, as well as the local, or relevant, geographic demographics and statistics, including pay scales. This is important for equality comparisons and goal setting.
- Engage influencers: Invite willing and able actors, especially managers, in the design process. Rather than hiring outside experts that design and deploy, engage your stakeholders. Ask your managers to conduct reality checks: how does this impact current systems, processes, and ways of doing business?
- Create your model of change: Take local context into account when formulating a plan by identifying a target of change and where it is most likely to improve. Understand the experiences of specific groups of underrepresented minorities, that one-size-does-not-fit-all, and that minority voices are not heard until they reach 30% critical mass.
- Build momentum: Begin with the most engaged departments, teams, or individuals. Incorporate bystander training to equip and empower everyone. Celebrate accomplishments as progress is made.
The Key to Inclusion
Great leaders understand that diversity and inclusion are not the same.While companies can mandate diversity, they have to cultivate inclusion. This begins with a genuine interest in, and for, other individuals.
You see, people instinctively yearn for inclusion; belonging is a part of our hierarchical needs to achieve our potential and peak performance. Our sense of belonging is relative to our sense of security and safety. Leaders who support diversity, equality, and inclusion provide a safe and equitable work environment.
Great leaders get to know individuals. They learn about their unique strengths, experiences, and needs. The best leaders demonstrate their understanding and care by recognizing individuals with respect.
Managers play a key role in this. As Michael Slepian writes for Harvard Business Review (August 2020), “Managers should not only signal that a social identity is valued, but also that the individual is valued, as a person, not just on the basis of the social group they represent.” And I couldn’t agree more.
You see, most individuals don’t want to be asked to speak on behalf of their social group; they don’t want to be singled out in this manner. Instead, get to know the individual, and ask them to share their thoughts based on their strengths and unique experiences.
Think about it: we don’t want to be included solely because of our social group. We want our social group to be included and our individual self to belong.
What do you think? How do you create a culture of equality and inclusivity in your organization? I’d love to hear from you. I’m available here, on LinkedIn, or give me a call: 561-582-6060.
